Search Results for “Buri Buri” – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

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San Francisco’s First Airport

Posted by Cindy on June 7, 2013

Jun 072013

Treasure Island
1 Avenue of the Palms
Administration Building

Treasure Island was built with imported fill on the north side of Yerba Buena Island The connected Yerba Buena Island sits in the middle of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge. Built by the federal government, Treasure Island was planned for and used as an airport for Pan American World Airways flying boats, of which the China Clipper is an example. The flying boats landed on the Port of Trade Winds Harbor / Clipper Cove which lies between Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island.

This relief, by Jacques Schnier, is found at the both ends of the building. They are the only visible ornamentation on the exterior

Full construction of Pan Am’s headquarters was delayed and instead, Treasure Island’s ﬁrst role was to host the 1939-40 World’s Fair, Golden Gate International Exposition. The Golden Gate International Exposition was held to celebrate the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, but was also designed to help bring the United States out of the Great Depression of the 1930s with a show of harmony between nations. Three permanent buildings were constructed to serve the functions of the Exposition and the airport. The Administration Building (seen above) would serve as the airport’s terminal building, the Hall of Transportation and Palace of Fine and Decorative Arts would serve as hangars.

As a result of World War II, the airport was never built. The US Navy wanted the island and so the Navy and the City and County of San Francisco swapped land and the airport was built at Mills Field*, the sight of todays SFO. Treasure Island served as a Navy military base during the war and as an electronics and communications training school for the Navy. The Treasure Island military base closed in 1993 and the Navy ceased all operations in 1997. The city and county of San Francisco now owns the island.

Pan Am Clipper Ship flying over the San Francisco Bay

These three building are the only extant buildings on Treasure Island that date to the Exposition period.

The Administration Building was to be the airport terminal. This Moderne style building was designed by architects George W. Kelham and William Peyton Day.

The administration/terminal building is semicircular in plan, its court having a diameter of 86 feet. It is constructed entirely of reinforced concrete and was designed to resist earthquake shocks. It has 2 main floors and 2 mezzanine floors and was provided with a radio control room and an aerial beacon on top of the structure for eventual use in connection with the airfield

George William Kelham (1871 – 1936) was an American architect most active in the San Francisco area. Born in Manchester, Massachusetts, Kelham was educated at Harvard and graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1896. As an employee of New York architects Trowbridge & Livingston, he was sent by the firm to San Francisco for the Palace Hotel in 1906 and remained. Kelham was responsible for the master plan for the 1915 World’s Fair in San Francisco and at least five major buildings in the city. He was also supervising architect for the University of California, Berkeley campus from 1927 to 1931.

William Peyton Day had been in partnership with pioneering San Francisco reinforced concrete engineer John B. Leonard. He later formed the firm Weeks and Day with Weeks as designer and Day as engineer, the firm specialized in theaters and cinemas.The firm was most active immediately before Weeks’ untimely death in 1928. Day continued the firm for 25 more years, closing the firm in 1953.

Jacques Schnier was an very important sculptor to the Golden Gate International Exposition, his contributions will be discussed with the Unity Sculpture Series.

*Darius Ogden Mills bought part of Rancho Buri Buri and built an estate named Millbrae, which gave its name to the present town that grew up around it. The 150 acres of the original estate bordering San Francisco Bay were leased by his grandson Ogden L. Mills to be used for Mills Field (the family estate). Rancho Buri Buri was originally granted to a relative of Tanforan, the owner of the Tanforan Cottages on Mission Street.

The Tanforan Cottages

Posted by Cindy on March 21, 2013

Mar 212013

214-220 Dolores
Mission District

Not far from Mission Dolores are a pair of homes considered to be the oldest in the Mission District and among some of the oldest in San Francisco: 214 and 220 Dolores Street.

The Mission District, originally Mission San Francisco de Asis, was the sixteenth in a chain of twenty missions stretching from San Diego to San Francisco. Mission San Francisco de Asis is affectionately called Mission Dolores after the lagoon the mission was first built on in 1776. At that time California was a part of Spain.

In 1821 Mexico achieved independence from Spain and annexed California. One of the first acts of the newly independent Mexican congress was to give the California governor the right to distribute land grants to private citizens. All a gentleman had to do to receive this generous gift was show that 1) he was a loyal and reliable Catholic citizen, and 2) he would map out his claim, build fences and build a house on his property. These grants were very large and sometimes ambiguous. (Today modern historians have a difficult time determining actual borders of these land grants.)

Mission de Asis 1856 (Photo credit: San Francisco Public Library)

It is thought that 214 and 220 Dolores were part of the Francisco Guerrero land grant, parceled in the early 1830s to both native “Californios” and foreign-born Mexican citizens. The parcels at 214 and 220 came into the hands of Torbio Tanforan and his wife Maria de los Angeles Valencia in 1896.

Torbio, a Chilean by birth, and his wife Maria, a native Californian, lived with their large family on a farm down the peninsula in what is now San Bruno. Their name is also associated with the Tanforan Race Track, now a shopping mall bearing their name. Torbio was the grandson-in-law of Jose Antonio Sanchez, the grantee of the Buri Buri Land Grant, where the race track was located.

It is thought that the Tanforans built 214 and 220 Dolores as farm houses. 214 was built first, and 220 followed a year or so later. The homes are simple frame structures with classic revival facades (an architectural movement based on the use of pure Roman and Greek forms in the early 19th century). Their false fronts, full width porches with square posts, and four-over-four window sashes (four panes of glass on the top frame and four panes of glass on the bottom frame of a double hung window) are common features of the 1890s. The deep-set backyard, another feature of that era, holds a carriage house that contained a Tanforan-owned carriage until 1940.

The houses were originally inhabited by the Tanforans’ daughter Mary and were handed down from sister to sister until 1952. It is not known if Torbio and Maria ever lived in them. They both died in San Francisco in 1884 and were buried in Mission Dolores; the home address listed on their obituary was Well Street.

In 1995, 220 Dolores was purchased by Dolores Street Community Services. It opened as a residential care facility for homeless men and women living with disabling HIV and AIDS. Originally the home was called Hope House, but was renamed when a neighbor (Richard M. Cohen)-who died of AIDS-bequeathed a significant portion of the funds for the renovation. Renovation was not an easy task, as 220 Dolores was already designated San Francisco Landmark #68. The architects took great care in maintaining the façade, and yet were able to add a lower floor, allowing the home to handle up to 10 residents at a time.

In 2002, 214 was repurposed as a home for drug and alcohol addicts in need. 214 Dolores is San Francisco Landmark #67.

If you are in the neighborhood, take a stroll past these two lovely homes, enjoy the gardens, and marvel at a time in San Francisco real-estate history when front porches, picket fences and expansive gardens were the norm.

Mission Dolores in the 1800s (Photo credit: San Francisco Public Library)

Woodstock Artists Cemetery

Posted by Cindy on July 8, 2019

Jul 082019

Woodstock, New York

The Woodstock Artists Cemetery is officially operated by the Woodstock Memorial Society, the original 80 foot by 100 foot plot of land was purchased by John Kingsbury following the tragic death of his son. Additional land was purchased and the Woodstock Memorial Society was incorporated on November 4, 1934.

In an effort to preserve the natural beauty of the landscape, the founding members sought to limit traditional symbols of grief. As a result, conventional tombstones and other visual intrusions were prohibited. As is still the case today, graves are marked only by ground-level stones, many crafted from native bluestone.

The Penning sculpture stands at the highest point of the hill. The poem, penned by Dr. Richard Shotwell reads: “Encircled by the everlasting hills they rest here who added to the beauty of the world by art, creative thought and by life itself.”

Tomas Penning was president of Woodstock Artist Association

Called the “Bluestone Master” because of his bold sculpture carvings, Tomas Penning was born in Glidden, Wisconsin and studied in Duluth, Minnesota, the Art Institute of Chicago and with Alexander Archipenko in Woodstock, New York.

In Woodstock, he and his wife ran the Sawgill Gallery with several other couples. During the Depression, he designed the craft-training center run by the National Youth Administration, and the Woodstock School of Art (once called Byrdcliffe) was later housed there.

Penning sculptured a Memorial for Thomas Edison, and has works in schools, and collections across the Country

Shotwell was a Columbia professor, who attended the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I and helped draft the United Nations Charter after World War II.

The only other above ground structure permitted is the memorial honoring the life of Byrdcliffe founder Ralph Whitehead and his family. Woodstock became a draw for artists in 1902 because of Byrdcliffe, which was one of the country’s first intentional arts communities.

The Della Robbia on the memorial was brought to the United States, and finally Woodstock by Whitehead himself.

The cemetery is the final resting place for artists as diverse as Robert Koch, the Academy-Award-winning screenwriter of Casablanca; American modernist painter Milton Avery; WPA muralist Ethel Magafan, children’s book author Paula Danziger; and pianist Richard Tee, who played on Paul Simon’s “Slip Slidin’ Away.”

The legacy of some artists buried there has endured while the names of others, once well known, have become obscure, such as this grave of Clinton Woodbridge Parker.

Gertrude Ross Jarvis owned an art gallery in Woodstock

Bolton Brown, carved his own birth and death years (as he felt the end approaching) into a boulder for his grave marker.

Brown was an artist, Lithographer, and Mountaineer. Brown was one of the founders of the Byrdcliffe Colony. He attended Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, where he received his Master’s Degree in Painting. In 1891 he moved to Stanford, California to create the Art Department at Stanford University and was head of the department for almost ten years, but was dismissed in a dispute over his use of nude models in the classroom. Mount Bolton Brown in the California Sierras, is named in his honor.

Wyoming Valley School

Posted by PQPP3 on May 17, 2018

May 172018

Spring Green, Wisconsin

Built in 1957, the building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who donated his design and 2 acres of land to the Wyoming School District in honor of his mother, Anna Lloyd-Jones Wright. It is the only public school ever designed by Wright.

The story goes that the school had land close to the road, but Wright, who truly believed in making architecture part of nature, wanted to build it into the small hill so he moved the building site back several 100 feet. It was not until later that it was discovered this was not property the school owned, Wright bought the two acres from the farmer who owned the land and gave it to the school.

Even with Wright’s generous donation the building did not have a budget large enough to be constructed, so many ways were found to help bring it in on budget, this included the use of cement block instead of stone, common light fixtures extended with standard plumbing pipe, and standard windows.

There are two fireplaces in the school. It is thought that only one was used, and this was often during Christmas pageants.

That same year, Wright was beginning construction on his redesigned Guggenheim Museum in New York, he was in the midst of a contentious battle regarding his 1955 design for the Monona Terrace Civic Center in Madison, and he was also in the midst of publicizing his Mile High ‘Illinois’ Skyscraper. In addition to these he had also just completed the design for his Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin and according to Frank Lloyd Wright: The Complete Works, that same year his office produced designs for at least another 34 new building projects, of which at least nine would begin construction in 1956 or soon thereafter.

Considering how busy he was this was quite obviously a labor of love for Wright, an opportunity to show what schools should look like and a chance to honor his mother.

The clearstory lets in so much light, that the electric fixtures are often not needed to light the building

The clerestory lets in so much light, that the electric fixtures are often not needed to light the building

The school opened in 1958 with 46 students in grades 1 through 8. After consolidating with the River Valley School district the building was used by the district’s 4th graders until being closed in 1990.

There are 12 mitered windows throughout the building

It was sold then sold to a private owner for $305,000. The first owner lost it through bankruptcy and it was purchased again by Jeff Jacobsen, a local landowner and neighbor.

The building closed and sadly, remained empty for much of the next 20 years.

In August of 2010 the school was given to the not-for-profit Wyoming Valley School by Jeff Jacobsen.

Small details were added to make the cement block a tad more attractive

This is mirrored on the interior as well

A view of the back of the school, showing how it was built into the hill.

The school is open for tours by guides that are local and very knowledgable, they will regale you with not only stories about the schools architecture, but stories from the teachers and students who attended the school during its 30 year run.

Just down the street from the Wyoming Valley School and Taliesin East, is the Lloyd Jones Family Chapel.

The rumor is that Frank Lloyd Wright, at the age of 18, met architect Joseph Silsbee, the architect hired by Wright’s uncle, to build the chapel, and the Wright had a hand in the design. The story is probably apochryphal, but if he did have a hand in the design it most likely was the interior ceiling.

The church also houses the family graveyard. Wright was originally buried here, but was later dug up, cremated and his ashes were spread with his third wife in Arizona. There is still a grave stone honoring Wright.

Also, hidden away on the grounds is the grave of the love of Wright’s life, Mamah Borthwick Cheney.

Grave of Mamah Northwick Cheney

A Duel Fought Over Slavery

Posted by Cindy on April 30, 2018

Apr 302018

The site is in an unamed park
Off of Lake Merced Boulevard
Access is available off of El Portal Way near number 79
Daly City just South of the San Francisco City Limits

On June 1, 1932, the site of the Broderick Terry Duel was registered as a California Historical Landmark, and in 1949, marker 19 was erected at the beginning of the trail that leads to the site.

Just after the discovery of gold the State of California found that its citizens were as divided as the rest of the nation in regards to slavery.

California was home to people from the North—often referred to as free-soilers—who were against slavery, and Southerners who supported slavery and called themselves the Chivs (for chivalry).

California entered the United States as a free-state, however, its vague antislavery constitution was open for extensive interpretation.

This intense division led to a duel amongst friends on a September day in 1859.

A second marker stands inside the small park

David Colbreth Broderick was born in 1820, the son of an Irish stone cutter. In 1846, after an unsuccessful run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, he moved to California’s to seek his fortune. After achieving successes in minting and real estate, he became a member of the California State Senate from 1850 -1851. In 1857, he was elected as a Democrat to the United State Senate at a time when the Democratic Party of California was sharply split in two, between the pro-slavery group and the “Free-Soil” advocates. Broderick was staunchly opposed to the expansion of slavery and worked to support the anti-slavery movement.

The two granite slabs mark the site where each man stood.

The two granite slabs mark the site where each man alledgedly stood were placed here in 1948.

David S. Terry was a Chief Justice of the California State Supreme Court and an advocate of extending slavery into California. Having previously stabbed a political member in 1856, Terry was man known for his hot temper and tendency toward violence.

Although Terry and Broderick had been friends, when Terry lost his re-election because of his views on pro-slavery, he blamed David Broderick for his loss. At a party convention in Sacramento in 1859, Terry gave a speech, attacking Broderick and his antislavery stance. Broderick responded to Terry with an equally unflattering statement and as tempers flared, Terry challenged Broderick to a duel.

At the time of Terry’s challenge, duels were illegal in San Francisco. They had originally scheduled the duel for a few days before September 13, but there was too large a group of witnesses and the duel was shut down by the city police.

On September 13, they secretly moved the duel located to Lake Merced, just outside of the city limits.

The pistols used in the duel. Photo courtesy of SFPL History Center

The chosen weapons were two Belgian .58 caliber pistols. Broderick was unfamiliar with this type of gun, while Terry, had spent the previous days practicing with this gun.

Even before the final “one-two-three” count, Broderick’s gun misfired into the dirt. He then stood facing Terry who aimed at his chest and fired, the bullet entered Broderick’s chest and lung. The wounded Broderick was rushed to a friends home but despite the doctor’s best efforts, he died three days later, reportedly saying “They killed me because I am opposed to the extension of slavery and a corrupt administration.”

The San Francisco duel drew national attention. Senator Broderick’s death turned him into a martyr for the anti-slavery movement.

Terry was accused of assassination.

Captain of Detectives I. W. Lees and Detective H. H. Ellis went to Terry’s home to serve out a warrant against him. Ellis described the arrest: “Lees and I procured a warrant against Terry and had it properly endorsed. We then proceeded to Terry’s home. When we arrived within about one hundred feet of the house, a window was thrown open and Calhoun Benham, Tom Hayes, Sheriff O’Neill and Terry leveled shotguns at us and told us to ‘halt.’We did so and announced that we were officers with a warrant for Terry. He stated that he was certain that he would not receive a fair trial and feared violence at that time, but agreed to surrender three days afterward in Oakland. Knowing that he would keep his word in this, as we also knew he would do when he told us that if we came nearer to his house they would all shoot, we decided to allow him to dictate terms. He surrendered as per agreement, and the case was heard by Judge James Hardy in Marin County, a change of venue having been granted because of the alleged prejudice against Terry in San Francisco. This case was dismissed but Terry was subsequently indicted by the Grand Jury in San Mateo County. The point was then raised that he had been once in jeopardy, and being well taken, that case was also dismissed.”

Senator Broderick’s San Francisco funeral was attended by thousands of mourners and Senator Edward Dickinson Baker (for whom Fort Baker in Sausalito is named) gave the eulogy. The City of San Francisco erected a large monument in Laurel Hill Cemetery and named a downtown street “Broderick Street” in his honor.

In 1937, with the closing of cemeteries in San Francisco Laurel Hill burials were relocated to Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in the town of Colma, just south of San Francisco. The vast majority of the bodies from Laurel Hills were moved to mass gravesites, and anyone wanting to have decedents privately reburied had to pay for it themselves. Laurel Hill’s site is located in Cypress Lawn Cemetery, and called Laurel Hill Mound.

In 1942 Broderick was reinterred at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in one of the mass burials, there is no grave marker for the Senator.

Oche Wat Te Ou

Posted by Cindy on March 21, 2018

Mar 212018

Yerba Buena Gardens

Oche Wat Te Ou – Reflections is by Jaune Quick-to-see Smith and James Luna.

It sits in Yerba Buena Gardens and was installed in 1993.

This tribute to the native Ohlone Indians, created by artists Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and James Luna, takes form in a semicircular wood wall patterned with Ohlone basket designs. Standing behind a crescent-shaped pool and a circle of moss covered rocks, it’s a contemplative environment, set beside a redwood grove with a single live oak tree nearby. The artists intended the piece to serve as a performance area for poetry, storytelling, and other events in the oral tradition. The Memorial is significant since at one time this area held an Ohlone Indian burial ground.

Tiles in the reflecting pool

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was born at the St. Ignatius Indian Mission on her reservation. She is an enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Montana.

She received an Associate of Arts Degree at Olympic College in Bremerton Washington. She attended the University of Washington in Seattle, received her BA in Art Education at Framingham State College, MA and a masters degree in art at the University of New Mexico.

James Luna (February 9, 1950 – March 4, 2018) was a Payómkawichum, Ipi, and Mexican-American performance artist, photographer and multimedia installation artist. His work is best known for challenging the ways in which conventional museum exhibitions depict Native Americans. With recurring themes of multiculturalism, alcoholism, and colonialism, his work was often comedic and theatrical in nature. In 2017 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Boulder Man

Posted by Cindy on July 19, 2016

Jul 192016

951 Chicago Avenue
Oak Park, Chicago

On the piers flanking the entry to Frank Lloyd Wrights 1898 architectural studio in Oak Park, Illinois, sit these two pieces, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and executed by Richard Bock.

“Boulder Man” is the most valuable of Richard Bock’s work. He originally designed and modeled the piece to top a gate post. The body, apparently half buried in the earth is stunning from every angle. These sculptures are reproductions. They were re-created from photographs. The originals had disintegrated beyond repair, the replicas were done during the 1980s restoration of Frank Lloyd Wrights home and studio.

The story goes that Wright wanted two sculptures, but could only afford one. To get reflecting sculptures, i.e. a right and a left, two separate sculptures must be made and then two separate molds and final castings, so he simply turned one of them to a different angle, giving the sense of two different sculptures.

Richard Bock was born 1865 in Schloppe, Germany. He moved to Chicago, with his family as a youth, where he grew up in German neighborhoods.

Bock spent three years at the Berlin Academy studying and later at the Ecole des Beaux Arts School in Paris. In 1891 he returned Chicago to establish a permanent sculpture studio. Almost immediately upon Bock’s return to America, he received three major commissions and for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, he sculpted major architectural works for the Mining and Electricity Exposition Halls.

He created interior bas-reliefs for Chicago’s Schiller Building, during which time, in the winter of 1891 to 1892, Bock studied under its architect Louis Sullivan. It was in the Sullivan’s office that Bock met Frank Lloyd Wright.

From 1903 to 1913, Bock worked almost exclusively with Wright on multiple projects, The two became close friends and their families often spent time together.

The close working relationship came to end when Wright invited Bock to accompany him to Japan. Bock, a family man, declined. Though they remained friends they were never worked together again or visited much afterwards.

In 1929, Bock became the head of the Sculptural Department at the University of Oregon, he retired in 1932.

In the 1940s, Bock and his wife moved to California where in 1949 he died at the age of 84 of Parkinson’s Disease.

Labyrinth in Duboce Park

Posted by Cindy on June 2, 2015

Jun 022015

Scott Street
Lower Haight
Duboce Triangle

This labyrinth was part of Duboce Parks revitalization plan. The plan, funded by Friends of Duboce Park, began with fundraising in 1997 and took years to accomplish. The labyrinth was laid in 2007.

It was proposed by Friends’ Janet Scheuer, who had walked labyrinths all over the world. “We need to create a quiet spot for people,” she said. She volunteered to “own” the project, find funding and work with designers. Hal Fischer headed up the fund raising. They raised $90,000, with $5000 from San Francisco Beautiful, $25,000 from the CPMC Davies Campus that adjoins the park, and $10,000 from Charlotte Wallace and Alan Murray. Rec and Park contributed around $80,000, says landscape architect Marvin Yee, Capital Improvement Division.

The Scott Street site had been occupied by a play structure in the shape of a pirate ship. Toxic, closed down and rotting away, it was ripe for extreme makeover. Janet recruited designers Richard Feather Anderson, a founder of the Labyrinth Society and Willett Moss, CMG landscape architect to create a labyrinth. The 23 ft. wide multi-circular path was sand-blasted into concrete. A border of mosaic tiles made by members of the community surrounds it, and a commemorative tile collage of the pirate ship graces the concrete bench facing the path. …

The joyous opening celebration April 28, 2007 was short-lived when the labyrinth was closed two days later due to the misapplication of anti-graffiti coating, damaging the labyrinth surface and making it slippery. A reopening eventually took place3 seven months later, on Nov. 2. One of the city’s most unique open space features is now a multi-use area. “People are doing tai-chi, picnicking, reading, walking and meditating,” says Janet happily, adding, “and it all works.”…From the Neighborhoods Park Council.

On this mosaic pedestal sits a labyrinth that allows sight-impaired and other visitors to trace a path with their fingers.

It says in both cursive and braille: With eyes closed, trace the grooved path from the outermost edge to the center with one or more fingers. The center is the halfway point. To complete the journey, retrace the path from the center outward.

This spot where Duboce Park now occupies was originally to be a hospital. However, Colonel Victor Duboce, after serving with the First California Volunteers in the Spanish-American War, returned to the city and was elected to the Board of Supervisors. He died on August 15, 1900 and was buried in the National Cemetery, at the Presidio. Upon his death the city changed Ridley Street to Duboce Street and decided to turn the land into Duboce Park (1900) rather than a hospital The park became a tent city after the 1906 earthquake, sheltering displaced residents from all over the City.

83 McAllister

Posted by Cindy on May 27, 2015

May 272015

This is the Methodist Book Concern. The book concern, established in 1789 in Philadelphia, was the oldest publishing house in the United States and used Abington press as their trade imprint. It is now the United Methodist Publishing House and it is the largest general agency of The United Methodist Church.

The Methodist Book Concern furnished reading material to church members and helped support ministers, who received liberal commissions for selling the publications. ”The preachers still feel the need of the press as their most potent ally in their work,” said The Methodist Review in 1889

Notice the MBC along the roof-line

The building was designed by Lewis Parsons Hobart (January 14, 1873 — October 19, 1954) an American architect whose designs also included San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral.

Hobart received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and studied at the American Academy in Rome and the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Hobart played a role in the rebuilding efforts of the San Francisco Bay Area following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, designing several buildings, including the Methodist Book Concern that was completed in 1909.

Hobart became the first President of the San Francisco Arts Commission in 1932 and was also appointed to the Board of Architects for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition.

The Methodist Book Concern was built on the site of the Yerba Buena Cemetery.

“Sixteen More Graves Discovered on Site of Yerba Buena Cemetery. Nine more bodies were uncovered by workmen excavating for the Methodist Book Concern’s new building on City Hall avenue and McAllister street yesterday, on the site of the old Yerba Buena Cemetery, one of the oldest burial grounds in the city of San Francisco, now in the heart of the great down town district. This makes a total of twenty-five graves that have been discovered on this site since excavation was begun last week. The first grave was discovered on Friday afternoon, with a well preserved headstone erected in 1851.
When it became known that the workmen were excavating on the site of the famous Yerba Buena Cemetery, a great crowd collected to watch the uncovering of the graves. Many rotted coffins were discovered, but in every case, the bodies had completely decomposed, owing to the damp and sandy nature of the soil, and only a pile of bones remained to tell that a human being had once been interred there.

By Tuesday night the workmen had uncovered the remains of sixteen bodies and these were placed in a little box and left for the Coroner. No one was sent form the Coroner’s office on Tuesday night, however, and when the workmen went to work yesterday morning all the skulls in the collection had been stolen. It is presumed that they were taken by medical students, or ghouls. What remained of the sixteen bodies was taken away by the Coroner’s deputy yesterday afternoon, and the bones will be reburied to remain until, perhaps, the advance of civilization once more unearths them in the midst of a populated district.”

The Yerba Buena Cemetery was abolished by the city hall act, passed by the State Legislature of 1869-70, providing for the removal of the cemetery and the erection of a City Hall on the property. The validity of this act was fought long and hard in the courts, on the ground that the tract was sacredly dedicated as a cemetery, and the fight was carried to the Supreme Court of the State in the case of San Francisco vs. P. II. Cannavan, who was at that time a member of the Board of Supervisors. The act was upheld, however, and the cemetery was removed in 1871.

That portion where the bodies are being found was one of the lowest spots in the cemetery, and it is probable that the graves which are being unearthed may have been covered by sand before the cemetery was removed. The graves are from twelve to twenty-five feet below the surface.”

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, 9 April 1908.

The building does not sit flush with the street because its original address was City Hall Avenue. These streets were all changed when the new city hall was moved off of Market Street after the 1906 Earthquake.

The original address of the Methodist Book Concern was 5 City Hall Avenue. Sanborn 1905 map

The Methodist Book Concern location today

After having served as the Church of Scientology building for many years, the building has undergone a substantial seismic renovation and is now condominiums.

Caruso’s Dream Causes Pianos to Fly

Posted by Cindy on January 24, 2014

Jan 242014

55 Ninth Street
Mid Market/SOMA

I spoke with Brian Goggin about his installation of Caruso’s Dream well over a year ago. While it is taking a long time to get installed, and is was not quite finished when I wrote this post, I thought I would bring it to you anyway.

Brian has been in this site many times, you can read all about him here.

This is a public site-specific artwork commissioned by the developers of AVA 55 Ninth, a 17-story apartment complex on Ninth Street, sitting between Market and Mission.

After singing Carmen in San Francisco, the famous tenor Enrico Caruso woke the next morning in his room at the Palace Hotel to the shaking of the 1906 Earthquake. “But what an awakening!” he was quoted in the newspaper, “…feeling my bed rocking as though I am on a ship in the ocean, and for a moment I think I am dreaming.” This artwork, inspired by that quote, imagines Caruso’s dream on that fateful night.

Goggin, studying SOMA history, found that several piano companies were founded in San Francisco, most notably Sherman Clay. Sherman Clay is built on the spot where a piano was buried to fill a large pot hole thus inspiring Goggin and Caruso’s Dream. “Potentially that piano is still under Mission Street today,” says Goggin.

This installation is a joint project with Goggin and Dorka Keehn. They brought San Francisco the “Language of the Birds” that you can read all about here.

To build the 13 pianos, Goggin and Keehn collected 900 pieces of chicken-wire glass of different textures and colors.

The wooden struts that support the pianos were salvaged from pilings in the old Transbay Terminal. The ropes used to lash the piece are modeled after nautical hemp, tied in knots used by longshoremen.

The project was done at a cost of $750,000. This was part of the 1% for the arts program.

For those not familiar with the story:

The evening prior to the Great 1906 Earthquake and fire had been the opening night of the New York Metropolitan Opera Company’s San Francisco engagement. Caruso—already a worldwide sensation—had sung the part of Don José in Bizet’s Carmen at the Grand Opera House on Mission Street. “But what an awakening!” he wrote in the account published later that spring in London’s The Sketch. “I wake up about 5 o’clock, feeling my bed rocking as though I am in a ship on the ocean….I get up and go to the window, raise the shade and look out. And what I see makes me tremble with fear. I see the buildings toppling over, big pieces of masonry falling, and from the street below I hear the cries and screams of men and women and children.”

The Palace Hotel, where Caruso and many others in the company were staying, collapsed later that day, and sadly, not all would make it out alive. Caruso, however, made it out safely, his obviously very devoted valet even managed to remove the bulk of his luggage, which included 54 steamer trunks containing, among other things, some 50 self-portraits. “My valet, brave fellow that he is, goes back and bundles all my things into trunks and drags them down six flights of stairs and out into the open one by one.” That same valet would eventually find a horse and cart to carry the great Caruso and his many belongings to the waterfront Ferry Building—no mean accomplishment on a day when tens of thousands were attempting to escape the fires ravaging the city.

“We pass terrible scenes on the way: buildings in ruins, and everywhere there seems to be smoke and dust. The driver seems in no hurry, which makes me impatient at times, for I am longing to return to New York, where I know I shall find a ship to take me to my beautiful Italy and my wife and my little boys.” By nightfall, Caruso was across the bay in Oakland and boarding a train back to the East Coast.

After this experience Caruso vowed never to return to San Francisco, and he kept his word. Unlike Caruso, I promise to return to the site and bring you photos of the finished project soon.

Historic Odd Fellows Columbarium

Posted by Cindy on September 19, 2013

Sep 192013

1 Loraine Court
Inner Richmond

I recently attended a service at this columbarium for Alice Carey. Alice was a friend and one of America’s most respected historic architects.

On the cover of her memorial brochure was this photograph:

I knew it was time for me to explore the history of the columbarium and bring it to you.

The Columbarium is the only non-denominational burial place within San Francisco’s city limits that is open to the public and has space available. The crematorium was designed by British Architect Bernard J.S. Cahill in 1897. As you can see by the above photograph this Neo-Classical building was originally part of the 167-acre Odd Fellows Cemetery. The columbarium and cemetery survived a 1901 law that banned further burials with in the city limits, but the cemetery didn’t survive the development of the next several decades. In the 1930’s the city mandated that all cemetery gravesites be moved to Colma (nicknamed the City of the Dead), just south of San Francisco down the peninsula. The entire cemetery was moved leaving behind only the columbarium.

From 1934 to 1979 the building lay untended, some say it was even home to bootleggers during prohibition. In 1979 it was purchased by the Neptune Society and underwent a $300,000 restoration.

The Columbarium is considered one of his Cahill’s finest works. The Odd Fellows regarded death as a dignified and ordinary affair, without fear or morbid feelings. The interior of the Columbarium was furnished like a Victorian parlor with potted palms and oriental rugs. The neo-classical style building blends Roman Baroque, English neoclassicism, and 19th century polychrome.

The exterior has a Roman-inspired dome similar to Michaelangelo’s original conception for St. Peters. The dome is copper-clad and ribbed with an inner steel framework. A squat lantern is clad in copper with round openings and decorated with garlands. The walls are stucco and grooved to simulate stone.

The interior has four levels topped by a stained glass ceiling within the lantern. The dome is supported by eight Roman Doric piers. Flower and urn decorations are cast plaster. The central rotunda has four square wings.

The diameter, from the entrance to the stained glass window opposite, is 64 feet. The width of the rotunda within the Inner circle is 29 feet and the rotunda reaches a height of about 45 feet.

Original Odd Fellows literature described the rotunda of the Columbarium: “a delicate and refined atmosphere prevails here, divesting the mind of unpleasant feeling that so often goes hand in hand with anything associated with the burial of the dead.”

Built into the building’s four stories of passageways, the decorated niches for San Francisco citizens of the past tell the city’s history dating back to the 1890s, including the 1906 earthquake (which the building handily survived), Harvey Milk’s assassination and the staggering number of deaths during the height of the AIDS epidemic.

The first floor has the Greek names of the winds: Aquilo, Solanus, Eurus, Auster, Notus, Zephyrus, Olympias and Arktas. The second floor has the Greek names of the constellations: Corona, Zubanan, Cheiron, Argo, Sothis, Orion, Perseus and Kepheus.

The window in the Aquilo room depicting three angels in flight, was restored by The Hyland Studio, according to their website:

The Designer was a fellow named Harry Ryle Hopps, the glazier was E. B. Wiley. Mr. Hopps was born in 1869. We know that he was an owner of “United Glass Art Co.” located at 115 Turk St in San Francisco.

The Three Angels window was built in 1909. Three years after the 1906 earthquake, 7 years after the 1902 cemetery re-location began and one year before cremation was banned in the city which led to the eventual abandonment of the building.

The ground floor contains approximately 2,400 niches, the first floor 2,500, and the second and third floors approximately 1,800 each, with an overall total of more than 8,500.

Bernard Joseph Stanislaus Cahill (1866–1944), was a cartographer as well as an architect. He was born in London, England in 1866 and is known for his cemetery architecture and for the design of the San Francisco Civic Center. He was also the architect for a number of other commercial buildings, including the Multnomah Hotel in Portland, Oregon and various buildings in Vancouver, B. C.

He was also the inventor of the Butterfly World Map, like Buckminster Fuller’s later Dymaxion map of 1943 and 1954, the butterfly map enabled all continents to be uninterrupted, and with reasonable fidelity to a globe. Cahill demonstrated this principle by also inventing a rubber-ball globe which could be flattened under a pane of glass in the “Butterfly” form, then return to its ball shape.

There is a marvelous group of stories about some of the inhabitants of the Columbarium at Bella Morte, be sure to click on the name Emmitt Watson to read about him. His story is so entwined with the Columbarium that not knowing about Emmitt is not finishing your history lesson.

Thomas Starr King

Posted by Cindy on September 12, 2013

Sep 122013

Franklin between Starr King and Geary
Japantown/Western Addition/ Fillmore

Due to the lack of land their are very few bodies actually buried within the City of San Francisco. This is why the Sarcophogus of Thomas Starr King is so unusual.

Thomas Starr King, a young, inexperienced Unitarian minister, came to San Francisco in 1860 when the state was undergoing an intense political struggle to determine which side of the Civil War it would follow. In public speeches, up and down the state, King rallied against slavery and secession. Through his eloquence and the sheer strength of personality he is credited with shifting the balance and making California a Unionist state. In his oratories King prodded Abraham Lincoln to issue an emancipation proclamation well before it was actually enacted.

During the Civil War, King turned his energy to raising funds for the United States Sanitary Commission, which cared for wounded soldiers and was the predecessor to the American Red Cross. King personally raised over $1.5 million, one-fifth of the total contributions from all the states in the Union. Exhausted from his campaigning Thomas Starr King died in 1864 of pneumonia and diphtheria. He never lived to see the end of the war or the Union re-established. Today Union Square is still named for the pro-Union, abolitionist speeches that he delivered on that site. (From the Fog Bay Blog)

The sculpture was commissioned in 1954 by the San Francisco Unified School District to be installed at the new Starr King Elementary School. In 1965, the sculpture was damaged by vandals and repaired on site by the artist, Ruth Cravath. The sculpture was extensively damaged by vandals in 1970 and was removed to the artist’s studio for repair. Because of the history of vandalism to the sculpture, the newly repaired sculpture was given on long-term loan to the First Unitarian Church, where it was installed in 1978. Martin Rosse, architect for the First Unitarian Church, designed the base; and Sheedy Drayage served as the contractor during the 1978 installation.

Sarcophagus of Thomas Starr King

Apostle of liberty, humanitarian, Unitarian, minister, who in the Civil War bound California to the Union and led her to excel all other states in support of the United States Sanitary Commission, predecessor to the American Red Cross. His statue, together with that of Father Junipero Serra, represents California in the national capitol. His name is borne by a Yosemite peak. “A man to match our mountains.”

California Registered Historical Landmark No. 691

Plaque placed by the California State Park Commission in cooperation with the California Historical Society and the First Unitarian Church of San Francisco.

April 24, 1960

Ruth Cravath (1902-1986) has been in this website with a sculpture at the Forty-Niners Stadium. In 1965 she gave a wonderful interview to the Smithsonian, the history of the art world of San Francisco opens up so beautifully in her interview.

National Cemetery

Posted by Cindy on September 6, 2013

Sep 062013

Presidio
1 Lincoln Boulevard

This is the entrance to the National Cemetery within the San Francisco Presidio.

In 1885, the War Department issued general order no 133 designating 9.5 acres west of the Main Post as San Francisco National Cemetery. This site was not the first burial ground at the Presidio. Others existed well before the U.S. Army established a permanent post there in 1847. A Spanish burial ground was situated near present-day Building 105. It appears possible that as early as 1854, Army personnel began burying their deceased in the area that was to become San Francisco National Cemetery.

Six acres were added to the west side of the National Cemetery in 1896, just two years before the Spanish American War dramatically increased both military activity at the Presidio and the number of burials at the cemetery. A total of 4,563 burials had taken place by 1904. Additions at the south side of the grounds increased the cemetery’s size to 28.3 acres by 1932.

In 1947 the army opened Golden Gate National Cemetery ( a magnificent area as well) at San Bruno and announced that San Francisco National Cemetery, which had by then received 22,000 interments, was closed to further burials due to lack of plots. Later, small parcel additions did allow for a limited number of subsequent burials. Signed by President Richard Nixon in 1973, the National Cemeteries Act transferred 82 of the United States’ 84 national cemeteries—including San Francisco National Cemetery—from the U.S. Army to the Veterans Administration. San Francisco National Cemetery is presently maintained by the National Cemetery Administration, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

This was the original gate to the National Cemetery. In the 1930s, this gate was relocated to the cemetery’s northwest entrance, and the new gate was constructed at the cemetery’s main entrance.

Plan of San Francisco National Cemetery, 1886. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Administration, History Collection

According to Veteran’s Affairs Department two unusual interments at San Francisco National Cemetery are “Major” Pauline Cushman and Miss Sarah A. Bowman. Cushman’s headstone bears the inscription “Pauline C. Fryer, Union Spy,” but her real name was Harriet Wood. Born in the 1830s, she became a performer in Thomas Placide’s show Varieties and took the name Pauline Cushman. She married theater musician Charles Dickinson in 1853, but after her husband died of illness related to his service for Union forces, she returned to the stage. During spring 1863, while performing in Louisville, Ky., she was asked by the provost marshal to gather information regarding local Confederate activity. From there she was sent to Nashville, where she had some success conveying information about troop strength and movements. In Nashville, she was also captured and nearly hanged as a spy. She returned to the stage in 1864, to lecture and sell her autobiography. Entertainer P.T. Barnum promoted her as the “Spy of the Cumberland” and through Barnum’s practiced boostership she quickly gained fleeting fame. After spending the 1870s working the redwood logging camps, she remarried and moved to the Arizona Territory. By 1893 she was divorced, destitute and desperate; she applied for her first husband’s military pension and returned to San Francisco, where she died from an overdose of narcotics allegedly taken to soothe her rheumatism. Members of the Grand Army of the Republic and Women’s Relief Corps conducted a magnificent funeral for the former spy. “Major” Cushman’s remains reside in Officer’s Circle.

The other is Sarah Bowman, also known as “Great Western,” a formidable woman over 6 feet tall with red hair and a fondness for wearing pistols. Married to a soldier, she traveled with Zachary Taylor’s troops in the Mexican War helping to care for the wounded, for which she earned a government pension. After her husband’s death she had a variety of male companions and ran an infamous tavern and brothel in El Paso, Texas. Bowman left El Paso when she married her last husband. The two ended up at Fort Yuma, where she operated a boarding house until her death from a spider bite in 1866. She was given a full military funeral and was buried in the Fort Yuma Cemetery. Several years later her body was exhumed and reburied at San Francisco National Cemetery.

In 1915, this concrete rostrum was built to hold official services.

Tekakwitha Lily of the Mohawk

Posted by Cindy on August 16, 2013

Aug 162013

Mission Dolores Cemetery
16th and Mission
The Mission District

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha baptised as Catherine Tekakwitha and informally known as Lily of the Mohawks (1656 – April 17, 1680), is a Roman Catholic saint, who was an Algonquin–Mohawk virgin and religious laywoman. Born in Auriesville (now part of New York), she survived smallpox and was orphaned as a child, then baptized as a Roman Catholic and settled for the last years of her life at the Jesuit mission village ofKahnawake, south of Montreal in New France, now Canada.

Tekakwitha professed a vow of virginity until her death at the age of 24. Known for her virtue of chastity and corporal mortification of the flesh, as well as beingshunned by her tribe for her religious conversion to Catholicism, she is the fourth Native American to be venerated in the Roman Catholic Church (after Juan Diego, the Mexican Indian of the Virgin of Guadalupe apparitions, and two other Oaxacan Indians). She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980 and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI at Saint Peter’s Basilica on October 21, 2012.

The relationship between the Spanish missionaries and the Native Indians is a controversial and difficult subject. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Mission Dolores had one of the highest death rates of Spain’s 21 missions in California. Thousands of Indians of bay tribes are buried in the vicinity. Nearly all of them died of European diseases, or overwork, or of the destruction of their culture.” Bret Harte’s California reports that the first interment in the mission graveyard took place as early as 1776. Most of these first Californians were buried beneath wooden markers that have not survived. My feeling is that the Mission decided to put this statue up to placate some of that animosity and serve as a marker for all those un-named.

Father Junipero Serra was nominated for Sainthood and Tekakwitha is a Saint . There is an interesting article about the controversy, and the apparent incongruity to the situation here.

The base reads: In Prayerful Memory of the Faithful Indians.

The artist on this sculpture is unknown, it appears to be cast stone.

The Don Lee Building

Posted by Cindy on June 20, 2013

Jun 202013

1000 Van Ness Avenue
Tenderloin

This magnificent building was built in 1921. Designed by Weeks and Day it is the largest and one of San Francisco’s most architecturally significant auto showrooms.

As the private automobile became a standard commodity of middle-class American life, hundreds of manufacturers rose to meet the demand. Within this increasingly competitive field, manufacturers quickly learned the value of the showroom in marketing their products to consumers. They understood that the architecture of the showroom was at least as important as its primary functional role: as a place to display, store and repair automobiles. In an era in which smaller automobile manufacturers were being weeded out, larger manufacturers aimed to reinforce customer confidence by designing automobile dealerships that, like banks, conveyed a sense of stability and permanency.

In San Francisco Don Lee was the first to commission such an elaborate showroom for his prominent corner lot on Van Ness Avenue. The completion of the Don Lee Building in 1921 led to increasing rivalries between local dealers, as each tried to outdo each other by commissioning prominent architectural firms to design increasingly elaborate showrooms.

Although the Don Lee Building is a utilitarian concrete loft structure, the architecture of the building embodied popular historicist imagery derived from a multitude of sources including Renaissance Italy and idealized Spanish Colonial architecture.

The main elevation on Van Ness Avenue is divided into three horizontal bands, conforming to the classic Renaissance composition of a base, shaft and capital.

The base is clad entirely in rusticated terra cotta blocks with chamfered joints designed to replicate dressed stone. The recessed entry contains brass double doors that once provided access to the auto showroom. Flanking the entrance are pairs of terra cotta Tuscan Order columns supporting a broken entablature.

The shaft, faced with light-colored stucco and bracketed by terra cotta quoins, is demarcated from the base by a terra cotta entablature and from the cornice by a prominent terra cotta frieze. The shaft is articulated by a grid of fifteen double-height window openings fitted with wood, double-hung sash, decorative metal spandrel panels and twisted metal colonnettes.

The façade terminates in a prominent fiberglass cornice which projects seven feet from the building’s face and duplicates the original sheet metal cornice removed in 1955.

The above is from the National Register of Historic Places in San Francisco. This building is National Register #01001179.

Weeks & Day (1916-1953)
Charles Peter Weeks (1870–1928)
William Peyton Day (1886–1966)Charles Peter Weeks was born in Copley, Ohio on September 1, 1870, the son of Peter Weeks and Catharine Francisco. He was educated at the University of Akron and obtained some preliminary experience working in the Akron office of architect Charles Snyder.
From 1892-95 he attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, having been accepted into the atelier of Victor Laloux. Returning from Paris, he worked in Cleveland for a while and then moved to New York, initially working as an interior decorator, until in 1899 he joined John Galen Howard at the firm of Howard & Cauldwell.

In 1901 Howard moved to Berkeley, to become supervising architect for the University of California, and he invited Weeks to join him as head designer. That association did not continue for long. In 1903 Weeks joined established San Francisco architect Albert Sutton (1867-1923) as junior partner in the firm of Sutton & Weeks.

Weeks wrote a plaintive article for the June 1906 Architect and Engineer magazine titled ‘Who is to blame for San Francisco’s plight?’, referring to the devastating earthquake and fire damage. The article hit owners first for a lack of concern for quality, the City for performing inadequate inspections, architects for acquiescing on cheapness, and contractors for not giving value for money. In April 1907 he wrote another article on the renaissance of apartment houses in the City, which featured several Sutton & Weeks designs. Sutton moved to Hood River, Oregon in 1910, leaving Weeks to practice on his own.

In 1916 Weeks took on engineer William Peyton Day as a partner and together they designed this magnificent Don Lee Building, the Huntington Hotel, the Mark Hopkins Hotel, the Brocklebank apartments at 1000 Mason and the Sir Francis Drake Hotel on Powell at Sutter. Weeks & Day were responsible for designing the main mausoleum at Mountain View Cemetery, where Weeks is buried.

After the Brocklebank was completed in 1926, Weeks and his wife moved into the building. Sadly, on March 25, 1928, Weeks was found dead in the living room of the apartment by his wife’s maid.

William Peyton Day continued the operations of the company for another 25 years.

The sculpture above the doorway is by Jo Mora you can read all about it here.

Avenida del Rio Bike Path and Greenbelt

Posted by Cindy on September 15, 2012

Sep 152012

16th and Harrison
Mission District / SOMA

Mission Creek Mosaic Mural
Ceramic tile and mirror mosaic, 15 ft. x 8.5 ft.
Funding provided by Potrero Nuevo Fund administered by New Langton Arts.

Avenida del Rio tile mural marks one end of what is hoped to be the Mission Creek Bikeway and Greenbelt.

The bikeway will follow the path of the now-buried creek. When the Forty-Niners arrived, they filled the creek in and built a railroad on top. Now what remains is a curved urban anomaly of a street cutting through the San Francisco street grid. The trail would follow this scar and bring life and activity to the area, and connect the Mission to Mission Bay once again.The Mission Creek Bikeway will begin at 16th and Harrison Streets, winding around the nose of Potrero Hill, crossing 7th Street and the Caltrain tracks, continuing along the south side of the Mission Creek Channel and connecting with the new Giants stadium, and, of course, the waterfront. A spur of the bikeway will extend from the 8th and Townsend traffic circle along Townsend Street, connecting with the Caltrain station, where a BikeStation is also being planned.

THE VISION:
The Bikeway will reclaim much-needed open space, creating space for recreation, vegetation, and an opportunity to enhance public awareness of the environment. The Mission Creek Bikeway will also serve as a critical transportation link in a city where 1 of 25 adults relies on a bicycle for daily commuting. With one end in the Mission area — a densely populated neighborhood popular among bicyclists — and the other in South of Market (SOMA) — a quickly changing area begging for greater transportation choices, the Bikeway bridges an important gap in the city’s Bicycle Network. Once completed, a person will be able to ride a bike from most locations in the Mission district to most locations downtown and in SOMA and Mission Bay almost entirely on comfortable, convenient bike paths and bike lanes.

Artists for this mosaic were Lillian Sizemore and Laurel True.

Lillian Sizemore has studied mosaics at the prestigious Studio Arte del Mosaico in Ravenna, Italy, Art History at the Universita de Bolgna and holds degrees in Fine Art and Italian from Indiana University. As a professional artist, educator and independent scholar, she is faculty at the Institute of Mosaic Art in Oakland and a visiting artist as the Getty Villa, in Los Angeles, The Legion of Honor in San Francisco and The Field Museum in Chicago.

Laurel True is an artist and educator specializing in mixed media, glass and ceramic mosaic and public art. She received her BA in African Art and Cultures and has studied at Studio Arte del Mosaico in Ravenna, Italy, Universite Chiek Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, Parsons School of Design and the Art Institute of Chicago. True is the co- founder of the Institute of Mosaic Art in Oakland, CA and has fostered education in the mosaic arts through teaching and lecturing around the world.

The Presidio Pet Cemetery

Posted by Cindy on September 10, 2012

Sep 102012

Presidio
McDowell and Crissy Field Avenues

This military pet cemetery is a hidden treasure of San Francisco. If you are in the area when construction of Doyle Drive is completed, have a stroll, it is a really sweet place to wander.

Surrounded by a white picket fence and shaded by Monterey pines, the pet cemetery is the final resting place for hundreds of loyal animals owned by families stationed at the Presidio. Most of the grave markers mimic those found in military cemeteries and sometimes reflect the pets’ military lifestyle—listing birthplaces including China, England, Australia, and Germany. Many markers also include family names and owners’ ranks, which include majors, colonels, and generals. Others contain only a simple epitaph, such as “A GI pet. He did his time.” As in many military cemeteries, there are also markers to several “unknowns”.

Grave markers in the pet cemetery date back to the 1950’s, when the Presidio was home to approximately 2,000 army families. Though there are no official records regarding the site, some credit authorization of the pet cemetery to Lt. General Joseph M. Swing, who was the commander of the Presidio at the time. In any case, there are numerous legends surrounding the cemetery, which some believe was originally a burial ground for nineteenth-century cavalry horses or World War II guard dogs

During the 1970’s, the pet cemetery fell into disrepair. Legend has it that an anonymous former Navy man became the unofficial caretaker in those years and repaired the deteriorating headstones and repainted the fence. It is believed that he placed the military-style cautionary sign seen at the cemetery entrance. Today, the pet cemetery is officially closed to new interments.

Doyle Drive is the multilane elevated freeway that rises above the former Presidio Army Base to shuttle motorists from the streets of the city to the foot of the bridge. Built in the 1930s, at the same time as the Golden Gate Bridge, Doyle Drive is now a seismic hazard, so it is being completely rebuilt. But the new construction intersects with the pet cemetery so, to preserve the site, the cemetery has been fenced off. A sign placed at the entrance says that the “Presidio Parkway project is taking special care to protect the beloved pet cemetery, which has been designated an environmentally sensitive area and is maintained as an important cultural landmark. The pet cemetery is situated directly below the new, southbound bridge currently under construction. In order to protect graves like those of Willie the hamster and Buddy the bird, falsework (temporary structure used to build the new bridge) has been installed to span the entire length of the cemetery to support the long span span, 105-foot-long beams were placed across the cemetery and covered to prevent any debris from entering.” Sadly, a lot of damage was done by the construction before these steps were taken, I do hope when the project is over, attention will be paid to restoring this little hidden treasure of San Francisco history for all to enjoy.

Liberty Bell of Mission Dolores Park

Posted by Cindy on July 18, 2012

Jul 182012

Mission Dolores Park

The Mission

The plaque reads:

Mexico’s Liberty Bell

(A Replica)

On the early morning of Sunday September 16th a.d. 1810, Miguel Hidalgo Y Costilla rang the bell of his church in the town of Dolores, in the now state of Guanajuato calling the people to mass and to bear arms against the Spanish yoke of 300 years. The original bell stands now above the central balcony of the National Palace in the City of Mexico where the president rings it at exactly eleven o’clock in the evening of each September 16th in a traditional ceremony called “El Grito” – The “Cry” of Independence

Plaza and monument presented to the City of San Francisco by Lic. Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, President of the United Mexican States September 16th 1966

On May 17th, 2009 the San Francisco Chronicle ran this interesting article:

This seems like heresy, given the apartment prices around Dolores Park, but that gloriously hip plot of land connecting the Mission District to the Castro neighborhood was once deemed “cheap” enough to house the dead. According to Charles Fracchia, president emeritus of the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society, when Dolores Park (then Mission Dolores) was purchased by Congregation Sherith Israel for a Jewish cemetery in 1861, the area was “well out of town.” “There were virtually no residences in around the park,” he said.

Like the 15 to 20 other cemeteries in San Francisco, the graves were moved when property values got too high to justify burial grounds. (Parking lots, on the other hand …) After the city of San Francisco bought the land for nearly $300,000 in 1905, Dolores Park was briefly a refugee territory for people stranded by the 1906 earthquake and the accompanying fires.

Nowadays, the park has become the place to enjoy a sunny afternoon in the Mission. As the wide variety of park visitors indicates – from Latino families to young hipsters to Castro gays – it sits at the intersection of a number of San Francisco demographic groups. And it always has. Fracchia says that even while the park’s two statues – one the Mexican liberty bell and the other of Miguel Hidalgo, the George Washington of Mexico – speak to the Latin American heritage of the area, the immediate environs were a haven for the Irish community for much of the first half of the 20th century. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Lands End – Chinese Cemetery

Posted by Cindy on March 17, 2012

Mar 172012

Lincoln Park Golf Course

Chinese Cemetery

1st and 13th Fairway

At the turn of the 20th century there were no municipal golf courses in San Francisco or, for that matter, in any of the surrounding communities. However by 1902 golf was fast gaining popularity, and many private golf and country clubs were starting. The general public, who did not have access or were unable to afford the country club setting for golfing recreation, began to press the City to set aside some public land to be groomed as a public golf course.

In 1902 the parcel of land now referred to as Lincoln Park was a cemetery, which was named Potter’s Field. Like many cemeteries of that era, it was ethnically divided into various sections. What is presently the eighteenth fairway of the golf course was a burial ground, primarily for the city’s Italian community. The area that now constitutes the first and thirteenth fairway was the Chinese section of the cemetery and the high terrain at the fifteen fairway and thirteenth tee was a Serbian resting place.

At the beginning of 1902 two men, Jack Neville (designer of Pebble Beach) and Vincent Whitney, approached John McLaren, San Francisco’s steward of public parks in the early century, about the prospect of constructing a municipal golf course. Jack Neville at the time was a member of the recently formed Claremont Country Club in Oakland and was considered one of the finest amateur golfers in the country in the early part of the century.

John McLaren suggested that the Potter’s Field site would be a good place for the city and for Neville and Whitney to try their hand at constructing some golf holes. At the time golf was still considered a game to be played on links land as near to the ocean as possible, and Potter’s Field, despite it being an existing cemetery, was considered a good site. By the end of 1902 a three hole layout was completed on the hilly, wind swept, and almost treeless land. These three holes occupied what is presently the first, twelve and thirteenth holes of the modern day course.

The above was excerpted from the Lincoln Park Golf Clubs History Page.

These photos are of all that is left of the Chinese portion of the cemetery.

Golden Gate Park – Thomas Starr King

Posted by Cindy on March 9, 2012

Mar 092012

Golden Gate Park

JFK Drive

Thomas Starr King – Bronze – 1892 – by Daniel Chester French

This statue was unveiled by Thomas Starr King’s grandchildren on October 26, 1892.

Thomas Starr King was born December 17, 1824 Mr. King was an American Unitarian and Universalist minister, influential in California politics during the American Civil War. Starr King spoke zealously in favor of the Union and was credited by Abraham Lincoln with preventing California from becoming a separate republic. He wrote a book about Yosemite National Park, where there is a peak named for him. He died of diphtheria in San Francisco March 4, 1864.

The sculpture, which cost $18,000, was executed in New York City. It stands on a pedestal of pink Missouri granite.

Daniel Chester French is one of America’s most important sculptors. His works include the seated figure of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. and the Minute Men statue in Concord Massachusets.

French was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1850. He was a neighbor and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Alcott family. His decision to pursue sculpting was influenced by Louisa May Alcott’s sister May Alcott. French died in Stockbridge, Massachusetts in 1931 at age 81 and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts.

The Embarcadero – Rincon Annex Murals

Posted by Cindy on November 23, 2011

Nov 232011

The Embarcadero

Rincon Annex

98 Howard Street

Panel #17

Panel #17. “Vigilante Justice Vigilance committees formed during the 1850’s in San Francisco to counteract excessive criminality and a weak city government. These committees handed down verdicts on their own terms. Vigilante justice was also popular in mining towns. This panel depicts vigilante actions in 1856 that resulted from the murder of newspaper editor James King of William by county supervisor James P. Casey. Casey was convicted and hanged at the same moment King of William was being buried”

Panel #20

Panel #20. “San Francisco as a cultural center The famous San Franciscans pictured in this panel are, from left to right, acress Lotta Crabtree, writer Frank Norris, horticulturist Luther Burbank, writers Robert Louis Stevenson, Merk Train, Bret Harte, publisher and writer Hubert Howe and writer Jack London. On the far-right is a scene of ghost-like WPA artists painting a mural, a commentary on the federal art programs which had ceased to exist earlier in the 1940’s. The broadside pictured in the upper center relates to the 1863 racy melodrama, Mazeppa, a play in which actress Adah Issacs Menkin appeared seemingly nude (actually in flesh-colored tights) while on horseback. “According to Rob Spoor “Cultural Life in San Francisco” originally showed books by controversial authors; they were painted out. Even Lotta Crabtree’s pink outfit was considered too risquÈ for 1950s San Francisco (but remained unaltered).

Panel #25

Panel #25. “Building the Golden Gate Bridge. Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge was begun in 1933 and completed in 1937. At that time, the 4,200 foot span was the longest in the world. The towers are 746 feet high, ship clearance underneath the roadway is 220 feet. The chief engineer, Joseph Strauss designed and built over 400 bridges during his lifetime. The Golden Gate Bridge is considered his masterpiece.”

Panel #27 World War II

Oddly, there is not explanation plaque for this particular mural.

All the descriptions following the murals on this post can be found on plaques near the murals.

Refregier was born in Moscow and emigrated to the United States in 1920. After working various odd jobs, he earned a scholarship to the Rhode Island School of Design in 1921. Refregier found inspiration in tragic events. He was quoted as saying that “the richer we [were] in possessions, the poorer we became in their enjoyment.” He said the amazing part of that period was the “human quality, the humanist attitude that [everyone] had” and the discovery that “the artist was not apart from the people.” He struggled as a muralist until the government began the Works Progress Administration.

Candlestick Park – Endangered Garden

Posted by Cindy on November 4, 2011

Nov 042011

Candlestick Park

The Endangered Garden by Patricia Johanson

“Endangered Garden”, a linear park along San Francisco Bay was commissioned in 1987 by the San Francisco Arts Commission. As co-designer of the thirty million dollar “Sunnydale Facilities”, a pump station and holding tank for water and sewage, Patricia Johanson’s intent was to present this functional structure as a work of art and a productive landscape. Other goals included increasing food and habitat for wildlife, and providing maximum public access to San Francisco Bay. Tidal sculpture, butterfly meadow, habitat restoration, seating, and overlook are all incorporated into the image of the endangered San Francisco Garter Snake, as is a public access baywalk, thirty feet wide and one-third of a mile long that coincides with the roof of the new transport / storage sewer.

This portion is the head of the garter snake. While it is hard to discern at this point, if you are on the freeway driving into the city from the airport, you know it is a snake. The colors of the pavement represent the colors of the garter snake.

“Ribbon Worm-Tide Pools”, is a small sculpture within the “body” of the snake. It provides a path down to the marsh and mudflats of San Francisco Bay. The intention was for the worm itself to be in tangled masses among mussels and barnacles during high tide, but judging by the amount of trash in amongst it, that doesn’t happen very often.

Depressions in the pavement, modeled on California Indian petroglyphs, fill with rainwater for birds. Hundreds of prehistoric shell mounds once dotted the shores of San Francisco Bay, and this site was continuously occupied from around 1500 B.C. by Native Americans who fished in the bay, hunted waterfowl in the marshes, and foraged for shellfish along the mudflats. When excavated in 1910, many human burials and artifacts were recovered from a shell mound on this site, which today lies buried under twenty-five feet of “landfill”.

Philadelphia – June 16, 2011

Posted by Cindy on June 16, 2011

Jun 162011

I am in Philadelphia and I hate doing the classic tourist stuff, so sorry, you won’t see a picture of the Liberty Bell, but this is pretty touristy as things go. This is Christ Church Burial Ground. I love cemeteries, they are so full of history, even if you don’t know anything about the people buried there, they have history for the people that knew them and the towns they are buried in.

This particular cemetery has history for all of us. Benjamin Franklin is buried here, as well as four other signers of the Declaration of Independence. Commodore William Bainbridge, Commodore of Old Ironsides, is buried here along with at least one other Commodore. There are prominent statesmen and important business men that were vital to the founding of this country.

From 1997 to 2003 the graveyard was closed, according to one of the people I spoke to it was abandoned and filled with rubbish and people looking for a place for the night. The Burial Ground has 1,400 markers. It is estimated that more than 5,000 markers have disappeared due to neglect of the place. It is almost impossible to read the grave markers due to neglect and weathering, fortunately, in 1864, the warden of Christ Church, Edward Lyon Clark compiled a book of all the inscriptions that were still visible on the fading soft marble markers. Today plaques have been placed in front of some of the gravestones that contain the words that once appeared on the now blank headstones.

If you are in Philadelphia, be sure to stop in and pay your respects, it was only $2.00 per person to visit, and well worth the respite and education.

Cupid’s Span

Posted by Cindy on January 22, 2000

Jan 222000

Embarcadero

Foot of Folsom Street

Cupids Span

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

2002

This is the artists statement regarding this piece: “Inspired by San Francisco’s reputation as the home port of Eros, we began our project for a small park on the Embarcadero along San Francisco Bay by trying out the subject of Cupid’s stereotypical bow and arrow. The first sketches were made of the subject with the bowstring drawn back, poised on the feathers of the arrow, which pointed up to the sky.

When Coosje van Bruggen found this position too stiff and literal, she suggested turning the image upside down: the arrow and the central part of the bow could be buried in the ground, and the tail feathers, usually downplayed, would be the focus of attention. That way the image became metamorphic, looking like both a ship and a tightened version of a suspension bridge, which seemed to us the perfect accompaniment to the site. In addition, the object functioned as a frame for the highly scenic situation, enclosing — depending on where one stood — either the massed buildings of the city’s downtown or the wide vista over the water and the Bay Bridge toward the distant mountains.

As a counterpoint to romantic nostalgia, we evoked the mythological account of Eros shooting his arrow into the earth to make it fertile. The sculpture was placed on a hill, where one could imagine the arrow being sunk under the surface of plants and prairie grasses. By slanting the bow’s position, Coosje added a sense of acceleration to the Cupid’s Span. Seen from its “stern,” the bow-as-boat seems to be tacking on its course toward the white tower of the city’s Ferry Building. “

The Embarcadero and The San Francisco Bay Trail

Posted by Cindy on January 15, 2000

Jan 152000

The Embarcadero

The San Francisco Bay Trail is a bicycle and pedestrian trail that will eventually allow continuous travel around the shoreline of San Francisco Bay. As of 2011, approximately 310 miles of trail have been completed. Twenty six miles of the trail lies in the City of San Francisco one half of which is finished. The portion in San Francisco is expected to be completed in 2030 at a cost of approximately $6 million. The stretch along The Embarcadero is decorated with wonderful brass plaques set into the sidewalk explaining the fauna found in the area.

The following plaques will be found on the water side of The Embarcadero between Candlestick and Pier 39.

Each creature is accompanied by an explanatory brass plaque.

Pacific Tree Frog

Mostly nocturnal, this native amphibian seeks shelter not in trees but in fissures of rocks, in nooks and crannies of buildings and in plants along stream beds. It ranges from deep green to brown to gray with a tell-tale eye mask extending from nostril to shoulder. With a voice disproportionate to its two-inch body, a chorus of tree frogs’ kree-eks drowns out all else.

Burrowing Owl

Nesting in vacant burrows, this small, earth-brown owl is often seen in open country, hovering just above its prey it has a stubby tail and always stands upright, whether perching or on ground. When startled, it bobs up and down on long legs, making a sound like a rattlesnake. Burrowing owls mate for life, their song is a soft coo-c-o-o.

Dungeness Crab

Looking much less clumsy underwater than on shore, this big crab slides lightly over the sea floor on the tips of its legs. When startled or preying on fish, it can move with great speed. Spending much of its life almost buried in sand, the Dungeness Crab is found in water from 100-300-feet deep, coming to shallow water only to molt. It has a grayish-brown shell tinged with purple.

Red Tailed Hawk

Sadly, the Red Tailed Hawk’s explanation plaque was missing but if you are interested in reading about them here is the Wikipedia link.

Ochre Sea Star

This coastal sea star is 10-inches across; it has five stout, tapering arms and a center disk embossed with a geometric pattern of stark white spines Its color actually ranges from yellow to orange and brown to purple. Found in great abundance on wave-washed rocky shores, both above and below the low-tide, it creeps about with a slow, gliding motion.

Mule Deer

Feeding on grass, twigs, fruits and acorns, this black-tailed deer inhabit forests; open woodlands and chaparral. Throughout Fall and Winter, bucks and does stay together, but in Spring does wander off to bear their young. Mule Deer bed down during the day in leafy thickets where newborn fawns, with their lightly-spotted coats, are perfectly camouflaged.

Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse

This petite mouse has rich brown fur on its upper parts and a lighter, tawny belly. It avoids open fields, making its home in the dense pickle weed stands of salt marshes. Though a good swimmer a feeding Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse might scurry to higher ground when the bay tides rise, briefly exposing itself to an awaiting egret or hawk.

Chinook Salmon

Most of their lives, these fish are seagoing, but starting in mid-December, they journey up-river to spawn and die in the very waters where they hatched. From the time they leave the ocean until they spawn, five to eight months later, they survive without feeding. At sea, Chinook Salmon have gray backs and silver sides, when spawning, they range from olive to maroon.